


Reality

by Apetslife



Category: Popslash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-03
Updated: 2012-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 13:03:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apetslife/pseuds/Apetslife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance and Joey get a reality show, about the straight married guy and his gay best friend.  Lance thinks this is the PERFECT time to call Nick Carter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reality

  
The first person Lance calls when he and Joey get the television deal is Chris. Joey's already on the phone with JC and Justin conferenced in, he can hear the happy hoots all the way from the next conference room at the studio building. But Lance has something very important to run by Chris, and really, this seems like the best moment for it.

"We got it," he says first thing, as soon as the connection clicks live, and then winces and pulls the phone away from his ear as Chris's whoop nails his eardrums. Jesus. The man's voice could cut glass, Lance thinks, and not for the first time. "Dude," he complains, "ouch."

"Quit your bitching, bitch," Chris laughs at him. "You and Joey are gonna be TV stars. That's so amazingly excellent!"

"It's completely excellent." Lance can't hold in his own delight any more. Especially since now he doesn't have to hide anymore, doesn't have to fake date some girl, doesn't have to pretend to be straight.

"What's your boyfriend think?" There's that sly tone in Chris's voice. Chris has known that Lance is gay for just about forever, even taught Lance how to kiss about a hundred years ago, but the fact that he can openly give Lance shit about it now is just about his favorite thing, Lance knows. Chris feels that his own status as a happy bi man gives him gloating rights over all his gay and straight friends. God, Lance misses having him around sometimes. All the time.

"We're not together like that, you know that," Lance sighs. Again. Chris is like a small yappy dog with a bone, with this whole boyfriend thing.

"That's not what People says," Chris points out.

"We're a famous gay couple," Lance answers dryly. "They're all excited about it. What do you expect?" But he didn't call to talk about him and Reichen. He's talked him and Reichen to _death._

"You could always just tell them you broke up," Chris suggests helpfully.

"God, no. Could we stop talking about my ex, please?" Really, anything else would be preferable.

"Sure. How's the weather? We're expecting snow. Mom's thinking about getting a new puppy. I just found out I owe about ten million dollars in back taxes, that sucks. My car needs an oil cha-"

"Okay, stop," Lance laughs. "You're a moron. Look, I gotta go sign papers soon, but I was thinking about calling Nick."

The name falls into the conversation like a stone into a pool, spreading ripples of silence out. And then Lance, tense and clutching the phone to his ear, hears Chris sigh.

"Lance, come on. It's been years."

"I'm not...it's not like that," Lance says, stubbornly. "He's on a reality show, he was in a band, you know. Maybe he has some suggestions. I finally have a legitimate reason to call him."

"Our whole lives were a reality show ten years ago," Chris argues, but Lance can tell his heart really isn't in it. Maybe because he already knows it's a lost cause. "Lance, let it go. It’s been years, just…let go."

"There isn't anything to let go," Lance insists, and even though Chris grumbles, he doesn't argue the point. He’s known Lance for a long time and he knows when not to fight the inevitable.

***

Lance gets Nick’s phone number from Nick’s agent, who gives it up with almost disturbing ease. These days, Lance is used to either having people call _him_ , or to have agents politely but firmly let Lance know that his call wouldn’t really be appreciated at this time. He wonders if it’s a sign, and then laughs at himself. But he’s out, finally, and single, finally. He’s never had a chance like this before. He’s going to call Nick.

The number sits in his Treo for two weeks before he does anything with it. Chris gets so sick of hearing about it that he stops answering his phone.

***

“Hello?” It’s a wary voice, higher than expected and startlingly sweet, just like Lance remembers from way, way too long ago.

“Nick? It’s Lance Bass.” He’s learned these days never to assume that anyone will know him by first name alone. Even after People. “Sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I got your number from your guy at Jive.” He’s got his best professional voice on, the one with the rumble.

“Um.” There’s a bit of silence at the other end. Lance understands. After all, he hasn’t spoken to Nick, in…oh, two or three years. “Yeah?” He sounds uncertain. Adorable, Lance thinks, fighting back the swoon.

“I’m up for this reality show,” Lance dives right in. “Actually, I got it. Me and Joey did, actually, we’re doing it for sure.”

“Oh, hey, yeah, I think I read something about that.” Nick’s voice gets a little warmer, more relaxed. “Congratulations, man, that’s great. It’s like the Odd Couple, right? I read something about that a while back.”

”Yeah,” Lance is beyond delighted that Nick’s heard of his show. “You seriously heard about it? Anything good, buzz-wise?”

Nick laughs, full and goofy and natural, and Lance clenches his hand into a fist. “Nah, nothing real, just that it was in proposal. You can’t blame me for checking out the competition, right?”

“I guess not,” Lance has to give him that. “I was actually kinda calling about that. You know, see if you have any tips.” Now that he’s at the moment, he can’t quite propose that they get together for coffee and chatter. Can’t quite. “Pick your brain and all that kinda thing, find out the best things to hide from the cameras.”

”I am SO not the one to ask.” And now there’s a new tone in Nick’s voice, something wry and adult that Lance can’t remember hearing there before, not even though he watches The House of Carters with a certain rather embarrassing fascination. “I mean, sometimes I think that camera gets me at every possible worst moment. So, um. Expect that, I guess.”

”Great,” Lance groans theatrically. “One more thing for America to laugh at me about, huh?”

“Oh, hey, no,” and there’s that instant Nick sympathy. “I think it’ll be great, and hey, you can have your boyfriend come visit and everything.”

“We’re not really dating,” Lance answers automatically, and can practically hear the confusion suddenly radiating from the other end.

“Okay,” Nick answers slowly. Lance wants to kick himself, because now it’s kind of awkward.

“But that’s not really the thing,” he hurries to say. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Chris is laughing at him. “The thing is, yeah, I just want some tips.” He’s such a dork. SUCH a dork. He’s been asking out men with total freedom for months, now, and he can’t ask Nick Carter to just come hang out.

“I’m actually going back to Florida tomorrow for a couple months,” Nick says, and he sounds vaguely apologetic, but back to professional. Like he’s talking to someone he hasn’t seen in two years. Lance despairs.

“Hey, when you come back, then,” he tries to laugh it off. “By then we’ll be shooting, we can compare tips.”

“Sure, man. Can’t wait to see the show. Hey, tell Joey to give me a call sometime too, okay? He’s mah birthday brother,” Nick laughs his playful drawl, “we should all go hang out sometime.”

"You bet,” Lance says, and is proud of how even his voice stays. “Good to talk to you, man. Have a good trip.”

“Yeah. Good luck with everything,” Nick says politely, and the line clicks dead.

Lance bashes his Treo against the couch cushions so hard he erases half his speed dial numbers by accident.

***

“But we made _out_!” he wails to Chris ten hours later, after an exhaustive recap of the conversation where he’s pretty sure he could hear Chris clipping his toenails even over two thousand miles of distance.

“When you were _sixteen_!” Chris counters, all exasperation and annoyance and affection. “Dude, can’t you call Joey about this?”

“Joey doesn’t want to hear about Nick anymore,” Lance says glumly, and Chris calls Joey a smart man, and then hangs up on him too.

***

Nick starts dating an underwear model named Berlin and claims it’s true love to all the major celebrity news outlets, and even his family seems to like her, and Lance spends a morose week wondering if he’d have a better shot if he named himself after a major international city. Singapore Bass. Moscow Bass. They all sounds like strange fish dishes, and Lance decides, maybe not.

***

“You’re such an idiot,” Justin tells him through a mouthful of seared tuna, the next time they have lunch and Lance lays out the whole sordid story. “I honest to god thought that once you came out you’d be better with this kind of shit.”

“Shut up,” Lance snarls at him, with the utter freedom that only unconditional familial love can provide. “You never liked Nick anyway.”

“Your crush grossed me out too much to like him,” Justin informs him cheerfully, waving his straw. “You were always ‘Nick this, Nick that, Nick’s sooooo talented and good looking, ooooh.’ I dunno if you noticed, but we were kinda rivals for a while there.”

“No way.” Lance deadpans, bringing out the big sarcasm guns. “I woulda never guessed.”

"It’s true,” Justin assures him earnestly. That’s the thing about Justin, he’s got that look down so pat that even Lance can’t tell when he’s shitting him sometimes. “I know you built him up into this big thing in your head all these years, but he’s really not your type.”

“How do you know?” Lance has only been out for less than a year, now. What the hell does Justin know?

“I know you, and I know Nick,” Justin shrugs. “Dude, call Chris.”

“He’s not talking to me,” Lance sighs, and Justin laughs and laughs.

***

Lance gets the feeling that the guys are talking behind his back, because Joey visits him and sleeps on his couch for three days and gets him drunk and makes him laugh. And JC sends him a card with pictures of out gay men cut out and put in it like a scrapbook, with arrows pointing at what JC considers to be their selling points and helpful comments scribbled all over. None of them are at all attractive. Lance wonders if JC is trying to turn him straight again. Or…something else, because JC was more excited about Lance coming out than LANCE even was.

Justin sends a fruit basket with a “feel better soon” card, which Lance figures is about as close as Hallmark gets to “I’m sorry your gay crush is straight and not interested in you, buck up little camper!”

In his heart, he knows that Nick’s really just a dream, something he’s held on to all these years as a symbol of what he’d never let himself have. And that he’s a stand-in for every attractive, unavailable man he’d mooned over all those painful times.

Still, though, he mopes. And Chris won’t talk to him. And that maybe sucks the worst of all, because no matter what Lance has gone through, the failed space mission and the disastrous first boyfriends and the whole coming out thing and the disaster with Reichen (who Lance still talks to and does not hate, thank you very much), Chris has _always_ been there.

***

Joey at his door with a camera in hand is not unusual, really. Joey at his door in LA at nine a.m., when he’s supposed to be in Orlando with his family, _is_. And Joey at his door in LA with a camcorder to his face, with someone else standing half-obscured behind him, is enough to make Lance want to duck and run.

Or look around for the “Punk’d” crew.

“Hey, Joe,” he says warily, half-behind his door. Security wouldn’t have let anyone insane get this far, not in this gated community, but Lance is still in baggy sweats and with flat bed-hair and he hasn’t been keeping up with his crunches and tanning and he doesn’t want pictures of this getting out. Not if he ever wants to get laid in this town again. “What the fuck?”

“We’re gonna have to edit that out,” Joey says, preoccupied. “Watch your mouth, Lance, this is for posterity.”

“What is for what?” Lance blinks, and then Chris steps around from behind Joey. He’s grinning ear to ear, and he looks great, really great, fit and happy and his hair, Lance can’t help but notice, is fantastic.

“Holy shit,” he blurts, and moves forward to give Chris something, a hug or a handshake or SOMEthing, but Chris’s raised hand stops him in his tracks.

“Don’t mess this up,” he warns, and suddenly Lance notices a thread of something, nerves or something, making Chris’s face a little tense. Joey moves off to the side, keeping the camera trained on them both. Lance barely notices. “I’m auditioning.”

"Huh?"

“There’s this reality show,” Chris starts, and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, now. He looks really good, Lance notices again. “It’s got these guys, one is straight and one is gay. And the straight one is married.”

"I know this,” Lance breaks in impatiently, only to be stopped by Chris’s “hsst! Quiet!” Joey’s just filming, standing there silently, like he’s not even there.

“…And the gay one is single,” Chris goes on, as if Lance hadn’t said anything. “Now, what kind of picture is that to give to America? Here you have this handsome young man, smart and successful, and he can’t get himself a boyfriend?”

“I can get myself--"

“Hsst! Now this handsome young man, he seems to have this fixation on men he kissed when he was just a youngster. Even if it was only the once.”

Lance is starting to wonder if he knows where this might be going. He puts his hand out against the door, needing the support. He can feel his eyes getting wider and wider.

“So here you have this man in need of a boyfriend. A significant other, as it were. Someone who knows him, l-loves him, isn’t gonna fuck him up or screw him over on national tv. And of course, someone who’s devastatingly witty and talented and gorgeous,” Chris seems to be over his little stutter, but Lance isn’t, not yet, “who’ll do him credit with the audience.”

“Chris,” Lance breathes, but Chris isn’t done yet.

"Now, since our hero has this fixation, and since once, long ago, I did indeed manage to plant one on his sexy mouth (even though it was disappointingly innocent at the time), I figured, I could take one for the team. Throw myself on the sword. Face the ravenous lions. There won’t really be lions, right? Because I’m honestly more of a dog person-"

“Chris,” Lance says firmly, and steps out from the door, reaching for Chris and pulling him in as soon as he’s in arms-length. And he kisses him, just like that, right there, with Joey finally cheering from behind the camera, and the neighbors and god all watching. Soft mouth and sweet tongue and the gentle scratch of beard and Chris.

“I got tired of waiting for you to remember,” Chris murmurs against Lance’s mouth, when Lance lets him up for air.

“I never forgot,” Lance whispers back.


End file.
